CHAPTER II 



The Sea's Way 



We who live in the heart of great cities, who lead our entire 

 lives in deep straight canyons of brick and stone or on the 

 peaceful meadows of farms, forget in the security of our mode 

 of living that there is a sea, that only a short distance from our 

 Manhattan, Philadelphia or Boston lie miles upon miles of rest- 

 less water, turbulent lonely reaches that stretch away to in- 

 finity and beyond. In our complacency we forget that the sea 

 is the greatest geographical feature of the earth and that it has 

 endured unchanged for long ages while continents rose and 

 fell, came into being and disappeared. 



The sea is the last wild frontier. Yet here in constant change- 

 ful mood, nature reveals the entire scope of her emotions. No 

 sunlit meadow ahght with flowers and with gauze-winged in- 

 sects is more peaceful than a calm ocean, nor is there a land 

 scene more replete with life and vigor than a teeming seascape 

 in the trades where the white caps curling from the tops of the 

 waves hurtle forward and spend themselves in white froth 

 against the dark blue. Then there are the times when Nature, 

 brooding over her wastes, sends the clouds and the fog, deep- 

 ens the sea tones and spreads a mournful melancholy over the 

 depths. And yet again, the sea is a savage place, she sends the 

 gale screaming from the four corners of the world to remind 

 men that their proper habitat is the land. When this happens 

 the ocean becomes the most awesome spot on earth, a turmoil 

 of mountainous waves, of bubbly froth and swirhng breakers. 

 Only those who have lived through a great storm at sea, who 

 have fought and battled with the ocean on its own terms, can 



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